How can we make a lasting impression in 2025 through an unforgettable customer experience?

Over the years, customer experience ( CX) has become a major concern for companies. And with good reason! When you consider that 61% of consumers don't buy again after a bad experience, it's hardly surprising that it's become a key strategic focus.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: to make a lasting impression with a consumer experience so seamless and enchanting that no one will ever forget you!

In this article, co-written with Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel, President and Founder of 1min30, we explain everything there is to know on the subject, as well as the good reasons to invest time and money in it.

We'll also give you some practical advice and examples of companies that have made a real impact in this area.

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What exactly is customer experience?

Defining the customer experience

The customer experience is defined as the totality of the experiences and feelings felt by the customer throughout the journey that links them to your company.

This experience can be segmented into two dimensions:

• the cognitive dimension, referring to the rational perception of your offering (price, product quality, etc.) ;
• the emotional dimension, which appeals to affect.

More difficult to grasp, the emotional dimension is now a central concern for companies, whether digital or not.

Moreover, the customer experience can be divided into several phases, and understanding them means grasping the 360° dimension it takes on.

We distinguish between :

• the anticipation experience, which involves "whetting the appetite" of the customer, even before the act of purchase;
• the purchasing experience, which takes place at a physical point of sale or on an e-commerce site;
• the delivery experience. With the explosion of online sales, this phase is becoming a major concern for companies;
• the user experience. This is the crucial phase when customers experience their new product or service;
• the after-sales experience. Finally, after purchase or use, the consumer is sometimes led to call on the after-sales service in the event of a problem.

What is the customer experience in 2025?

With consumers constantly online, you need to offer a seamless, interactive customer experience to build lasting loyalty. On social networks and websites, AI, machine learning, predictive analysis and virtual assistants have created a revolution in customer relations. They make it possible in the blink of an eye to interpret the buyer's needs, offering ultra-personalized recommendations at the same time.

💖 However, emotion remains a key concern, driving brands to offer an ever more human and authentic experience. Without a real emotional connection, the perception of the experience is cold and impersonal, with no added value.

The key? Finding the right balance between technological efficiency and a personalized relationship. Responsive customer service and empathetic advisors will boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.

In 2025, more than ever, the user experience must meet intelligent, connected and emotional expectations. It's no longer enough to simply offer a good product! To create a successful and memorable customer experience, we face the challenge of subtly combining artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence.

The difference between customer experience and customer relations

It's important to understand that customer experience differs from customer relations:

• CX is about how the customer feels;
• customer relations correspond to all exchanges between the customer and your company.

Customer relations are therefore often short-term, whereas the aim of customer experience is to leave a lasting impression on the consumer's mind, thanks to the emotions experienced 🤩.

How important is an optimized customer experience? The 4 key benefits

#1 Increase customer satisfaction

The best way to satisfy a customer? Offer them a positive experience, whether before, during or even after the act of purchase.

In fact, optimizing the customer journey increases satisfaction by 20%, according to a McKinsey study.

#2 Building customer loyalty

A good customer experience generates satisfaction. And the more satisfied you are at every level, the more loyal you are.

Acquiring a new customer is seven times more expensive than maintaining a relationship with an existing one.

One of the main benefits of improving CX is customer loyalty, which is much more profitable in the long term.

#3 Increase brand awareness

The profitability of an optimized customer journey also results from word-of-mouth.

A satisfied consumer is more likely to recommend a company or brand to friends and family, or on social networks.

Considering that 84% of people no longer trust traditional advertising, you might as well do everything you can to take advantage of the free visibility offered by your satisfied customers!

#4 Increase sales

Over 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a product or service if the customer experience is good.

The positive impact on your sales is therefore particularly tangible.

💡According to a Twilio report, after a bad customer experience :

• 38% of customers switch to a competitor or cancel their order;
• 66% tell a friend about their experience;
• 41% stop doing business with the company altogether.

The major challenges of customer experience in 2025

By now, you understand the value of nurturing your customers' experience ✨.

However, adopting the right strategies means understanding the ecosystem in which business evolves, and therefore the major marketing, commercial and technological issues of the day.

Here are a few examples 👉.

Hyper-personalization thanks to AI

Consumer expectations are evolving towards even greater personalization, and the use of artificial intelligence makes it possible to meet such a challenge.

That's why more and more companies are integrating AI to offer product recommendations, personalized reminders or even interactions tailored to each customer, and doing so with the help of predictive analytics and machine learning in particular.

Managing organizational silos

Information silos within companies remain a major obstacle to improving customer experience.

In 2024, over 54% of organizations report that their CX operations are managed in silos.

Unfortunately, this type of structuring limits companies' ability to respond quickly to customer feedback and coordinate efforts between teams.

Improving internal communication and sharing information seamlessly between departments is therefore a major challenge in 2025.

Sentiment-driven CX, or the emotional approach

Brands are beginning to take an increasing interest in sentiment analysis in their interactions, in order to understand customer emotions (frustration, satisfaction, etc.) and adapt their responses accordingly.

Thanks to this approach, they are creating stronger emotional connections, demonstrating greater empathy and active listening.

A word from the expert

Consumer needs in terms of customer experience are evolving rapidly, and we can anticipate several key trends. Firstly, personalization will continue to play a central role. Consumers expect tailor-made experiences, adapted to their individual preferences.

At the same time, speed and simplicity will be increasingly important criteria. Consumers are looking for fluid, frictionless interactions and instant responses to their needs.

Finally, the emotional dimension will become even more important. Brands that succeed in establishing emotional connections with their customers will create memorable experiences and boost loyalty.

Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel,

Examples of inspiring customer experiences

There's nothing like real-life examples to give you an idea of what a successful CX is all about!

And let's start with the champion of online customer experience, Amazon, who thought about how to use technology to improve the shopping experience in physical outlets.

Starting from consumers' needs and identifying the sticking points, the company came to understand the following reality: going through the checkout and facing queues was severely spoiling in-store CX.

The American giant therefore developed a device capable of recognizing who is buying what, and debiting the right amount directly from the credit card. No more queuing!

👀 Find out more in this video :

Another example: to improve the in-store experience, Sephora has developed an application, MySephora, containing all customer information. Advisors simply need to consult it to facilitate their work in real time.

74% of customers would appreciate the experience, which they consider different from that offered by other chains.

💡 Discover more inspiring examples in our article Customer experience: how about pumping a little on the big brands?

How do you offer a good customer experience? Our 6 tips

Tip 1: Determine your customer experience strategy

To know where you're going, you need to consider the following four questions:

• What is the scale of the project ahead? Depending on your company's level of maturity on the subject, determine whether your customer experience requires a simple improvement or a more profound transformation.
  
  
• What business objectives do you need to meet in order to optimize your customer experience? What precisely are the expected results?
  
  
• On what principles and values is your customer experience based? Your areas for improvement must take into account your values, your corporate culture and your brand image. Remember the emotional dimension that your customer experience must include.
  
  
• How are you positioned in relation to your competitors? That's why it's a good idea to draw on marketing research and in-depth benchmarking.

This strategic thinking will guide your future actions, as well as those of your employees.

Tip 2: Know your customers inside out

This step goes hand in hand with the previous one, because to adopt the right strategy, you still need to understand who your customers are, and what their aspirations are.

The best technique is to create personas.

These are fictional characters representing the population segments you are targeting. To create a more precise vision of your customer base, give them socio-economic and psychological characteristics, and identify the issues and needs your offer is likely to address.

A word from the expert

An essential tip for improving the customer experience is to put the customer at the center of all decisions and interactions. In-depth understanding of customer needs, preferences and journeys is key.

Then use the data collected to personalize every interaction, anticipate expectations and create memorable moments.

What's more, facilitate customer journeys by eliminating friction. Simplified processes and transparent communication contribute to a positive customer experience.

Finally, actively listen to your customers' feedback and use this information to continually iterate your approach and constantly raise the bar on customer experience.

Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel,

Tip 3: Involve all company departments in the adventure

To guarantee optimum customer satisfaction, make sure you involve all stakeholders (marketing, customer service, R&D, etc.). Teamwork is one of the keys to success: don't forget that the customer must be satisfied at every level, at every point of contact in the purchasing process.

That's why you need to ensure that all your employees are speaking the same language, to better reflect your corporate culture and brand image.

Tip 4: Think omnichannel customer experience

As you can see, you must always consider the customer experience as a whole... even in your communications.

Implementing continuous, omnichannel communication helps build a solid relationship of trust, and plays an effective part in transmitting your corporate culture.

💡 To achieve this, we recommend using appropriate customer relations tools. Here are 3 examples:

• Helpdesk software such as Freshdesk can make all the difference. It centralizes requests from the ticketing platform, phone calls, chats, emails and social networks. It can also automatically assign a task to an agent, with a priority level and the customer's history, to provide context and anticipate responses.
  
  
• RingCentral Experience Client centralizes all the channels deployed for your retail activity (live-chat, messaging, in-app messaging and Google my business). What's more, the tool enables every employee to respond to customers in real time, to avoid frustration.
  
  
• With a unified platform like Zendesk, you have all the tools you need to deliver a quality experience to your customers across all channels. By centralizing customer data and analyzing it, every member of staff can intervene effectively. You can automate the sending of personalized messages adapted to the different stages of the customer journey.

Tip 5: Personalize customer relations as much as possible

According to a Monetate study, 79% of brands that have exceeded their annual sales forecasts have implemented a relevant personalization strategy.

Source : Smart Tribune

Customer personalization is therefore one of the major directions your strategy must take.

To achieve this, you need to know each customer... or at least give them the illusion that you do. This recognition must be palpable across all distribution channels and touchpoints.

💡 With this in mind, we recommend equipping yourself with a suitable tool, developed with the aim of efficiently managing the processing and analysis of prospect and customer data.

• Bloomreach, for example, effectively optimizes your customer experience. Thanks to its comprehensive features, such as advanced personalization, intelligent recommendation and advanced marketing segmentation, you can create unique interactions that captivate your customers at every stage of their journey.
  
  
• The Salesforce Marketing Cloud CRM is a perfect match: it enables you to create personalized customer journeys, while promoting automation and the involvement of the various stakeholders (customer service, sales and marketing).

Tip 6: Automate certain interactions (intelligently)

More than ever, the trend in 2025 should be towards intelligent automation, with the development of self-service or selfcare technologies (dynamic FAQs, chatbots).

But automation implies having an integrated customer relations platform to centralize customer data and contextualize past and future interactions, whatever the channel used.

💡 An open, programmable platform, Twilio Flex provides users with a ready-to-use application solution for developing a unique customer experience. With its Studio function and easy-to-use visual interface, it automates interactions, whether via an interactive voice server or a chatbot.

How do you measure customer experience?

Choosing the right key indicators

We recommend that you regularly measure your actions. This largely drives your marketing strategy, and enables you to highlight any readjustments you may need to make.

This involves monitoring certain key indicators, or KPIs. But how do you choose them?

Here are a few examples of tried-and-tested indicators:

• Abandonment rate. Specific to e-commerce, it's a powerful indicator. If a customer doesn't go ahead with a purchase, it's because he or she was dissatisfied at some point along the way (payment too complicated, hidden charges, delivery times too long, etc.).
  
  
• Retention rate. This reveals a customer's loyalty, which, as we've seen, largely depends on the quality of their experience.
  
  
• Product return rate. Highlights your customers' satisfaction with your products.
  
  
• Complaint rate. For a more precise analysis, you can categorize the different types of complaint according to their severity and recurrence.
  
  
• Customer Journey Tracking (CJT). More advanced than Customer Effort Score (CES), it analyzes the customer journey, and when frustrations or abandonment occur.

But how do you accurately track all these indicators? Forget manual reporting, software automates it all for you!

💡 monday.com CRM, for example, is an intuitive, ultra-easy-to-use solution that guarantees complete tracking of your prospects and customers thanks to clear, automated dashboards and reporting. Make informed decisions based on figures updated in real time: sales and team performance, management and customer experience KPIs, mailing and campaign performance analysis, etc.

Gather customer feedback

It's also a good idea to collect customer reviews directly, so you can better understand consumer expectations and adapt your services accordingly.

To do this, provide them with online or in-store satisfaction questionnaires, or solicit their feedback by email, after a purchase in particular.

💡 Think about NPS, or Net Promoter Score! This is a score, from 0 to 10, determined from a question like "Were you satisfied with your experience with us? ". Based on the score, respondents are classified into three categories:

• promoters (score 9 to 10) ;
• Passive (score 7 to 8);
• detractors (score 0 to 6).

The NPS is then calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. The aim is to obtain at least a positive number, and even more if you're aiming for excellence (according to Avis de confiance, Tesla has an NPS of... 97%!).

Self-diagnosis tool: assess the maturity of your customer experience

An adapted customer experience isn't just a concept! ☝️ It's a crucial element for your business if you want to survive the year 2025. A bad experience? That's a lost customer, a damaged brand image and a lost competitive advantage. Conversely, a positive customer experience means :

• greater customer loyalty,
• a direct impact on your sales
• and soaring customer satisfaction.

So, where do you really stand? Our self-diagnostic tool enables you to analyze your level of maturity and identify actions to optimize your customer relations. Thanks to this mapping of the customer journey, the tool gives you a better vision of your contact points, the fluidity of interactions, the integration of digital tools, the impact of your services and the extent to which the voice of the customer is taken into account.

Our aim? To help you implement an effective, emotionally-driven customer experience.

Analyze your customer experience by evaluating each of these elements with a maturity score in stars:

Pillar	Self-assessment question	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐	⭐
Customer knowledge	Do you use a CRM to centralize customer data and optimize relationship management?	Yes, everything is integrated and automated	Yes, but use is partial	No, everything is manual
	Do you have a comprehensive database to track the history of customer interactions?	Yes, and it's accessible to all departments	Yes, but data is sometimes missing	No, no centralized database
	Do you have a strategy for regularly collecting customer feedback to feed your CRM?	Yes, customer feedback is constantly analyzed	Some customer feedback, but not systematic	No, no system in place
Customer journey	Do you have a customer journey map to identify contact points and avoid friction?	Yes, defined, optimized and fluid	Partial, but continuous improvement	No, no visibility on customer journey
	Do you analyze communication channels to improve efficiency (email, telephone, social networks)?	Yes, all channels are analyzed and optimized	Partial analysis of some channels	No, no analysis
	Are your website and digital tools optimized for a smooth customer journey?	Yes, simplified and fluid	Some optimization required	Confusing and unintuitive customer journey
Personalizing the experience	Do you tailor the experience to customers' needs, expectations and emotions?	Yes, ultra-personalized and targeted approach	Somewhat, but not always	No, generic approach
	Do you use tools to monitor and adapt the experience according to real-time consumer feedback?	Yes, feedback is integrated into a continuous improvement process	Feedback is taken into account, but on an ad hoc basis	No, feedback is rarely used
	Do you create customized offers or products based on the specific expectations of each customer?	Yes, each customer receives a tailor-made offer	Some personalization, but limited	No, all offers are standardized
Innovation and digitalization	Do you leverage digital tools (AI, predictive analytics, automation) to enhance the customer experience?	Yes, advanced technologies integrated throughout the customer journey	Some tools, but little use made of them in the process	No, no innovation implemented
	Does your customer service department use digital technologies to provide fast, efficient responses?	Yes, instant assistance thanks to automation	Assistance sometimes fast, but longer delays in general	Slow responses without modern technology
	Have you adopted chatbot or virtual assistant tools to manage customer requests?	Yes, we have a functional and efficient chatbot.	A chatbot exists, but it's still limited	No, no automated solution
Internal customer culture	Is your team trained to place customer experience at the heart of your marketing strategy?	Yes, customer experience is a priority for everyone	Partial training, some departments are less involved	No, no customer experience training
	Do you regularly monitor customer feedback to adapt your marketing strategy?	Yes, feedback is integrated into our marketing decisions.	Some feedback is taken into account, but not systematically	No, feedbacks are not analyzed
	Is customer experience part of your overall strategic objective?	Yes, it's at the heart of everything we do	Sometimes, but it remains secondary for certain decisions	No, customer experience is not a priority

Interpretation of scores:

The maximum score is 75 ⭐andthe minimum score 15 ⭐.

• 66 to 75 ⭐: optimum maturity

  Bravo, your company is a leader in customer experience! You offer a fluid, responsive experience across all communication channels, placing emotion at the center of consumer interactions. Good points for boosting customer trust and satisfaction with your products and values.

• 51 to 65 ⭐: solid maturity

  You're well advanced in your customer experience strategy, but a few relationship marketing optimizations remain to be made. Your team is responsive, but some channels require longer lead times. Analyzing customer data and criteria helps you to better capture the expectations of consumers in your sector, but you need to bring an even more personal dimension to your offers. Seize this opportunity to improve your customer service.

• 36 to 50 ⭐: medium maturity

  You're aware of the importance of the customer experience concept and are beginning to structure it, but several crucial elements need to be improved. Think about adopting digital technologies that provide you with assistance in managing customer relations and communication channels. Put customer service responsiveness, personalized experience and digital data exploitation at the heart of your objectives and concerns. At this stage, not to seek to evolve would be to lose market share.

• Less than 36 ⭐ : low maturity

  The organization of your customer experience is not yet adapted to the expectations and needs of increasingly demanding customers. You are in the early stages of development with mainly manual processes. It's essential to improve your customer experience strategy as quickly as possible to ensure smooth interactions and customer satisfaction.

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In conclusion, 8 customer experience mistakes to avoid

Customer experience has become a major concern for companies. If you neglect it, you run the risk of missing out on a significant increase in sales.

However, as organizations become more complex and channels and contact points multiply, it's not easy to know how to start improving or transforming CX!

In other words, you need to remain particularly vigilant and avoid making the following 8 mistakes:

1. not listening to customers and ignoring feedback;
2. proposing a uniform, impersonal experience that contributes to consumers' disconnection with your brand;
3. failing to respond promptly to requests or provide adequate customer follow-up;
4. offer an inconsistent omnichannel experience, with no harmony between the different touchpoints;
5. maintain organizational silos, to the detriment of good communication between teams;
6. automate excessively, without any human intervention, and give the impression of a cold, dehumanized CX;
7. fail to anticipate needs and trends, and regularly analyze consumer behavior;
8. under-invest in customer support.

In fact, to meet the challenge successfully, keep in mind that everyone in your business must act in concert in the 360° apprehension of the customer experience. Always stay connected to your customers, your values and your objectives. And don't forget to constantly measure the impact of your actions, in order to identify areas for improvement.

Finally, mobilize all your company's resources and use tools that are perfectly adapted to your ambitions.

It's a big job, but your customers have everything to gain... and so do you!